


Going Home

by Winstonian1



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Beatles Fanfiction, Gen, References to the Beatles, beatles early days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winstonian1/pseuds/Winstonian1
Summary: Beatlemania was pretty exciting, but for one of the people in the middle of it all it just became a little overwhelming., so, George went home to his mum, for a bit of peace and quiet and TLC.





	1. EXHAUSTION

January 1964

EXHAUSTION

“George.”  
Ringo turned back to the bathroom mirror to continue shaving. They had loads of time. He just knew how long George took to get his arse in gear for anything so wanted to give him a prompt. He listened out with half an ear for signs of activity; as much as he could have heard anything over the music blaring from their sitting room.  
Ringo finished his shave and rinsed off his face, and realised he’d heard nothing from his flatmate. Couldn’t have heard. And he’d woken him up that afternoon too; at least, he’d shouted at him and kicked at the bed. He gave a yell as he passed the closed door to George’s bedroom. “George!! Get up!” He continued on to his own room and shut the door and began the process of hunting for clean clothes from among the heaps of discarded garments all over the floor. He began to hum – he liked the track currently booming from the sitting room. A shirt! Socks? He grimaced; well, who was going to notice if they were a few days old?  
Ringo glanced at his watch, and sighed in slight annoyance. Very slight though – it took a lot to truly annoy this most placid of men. The table was booked for 8.30 and it was quarter to. No-one sleeps that long. Except George, it seemed. Unless, he’d gone out already without telling Ringo.  
As unlikely as that seemed, Ringo walked back to George’s door and this time opened it and peered in. The curtains were shut, as they usually were - neither of them ever saw the need to let the sunshine into a room you only needed for sleeping – but a glance into the gloom showed him that George was in fact in there, in bed and still asleep. “For God’s sake.” He strode across the room and shook the part of George’s anatomy nearest to him, probably a shoulder. “Get the fuck up, will yer!”  
And, to his dawning alarm, there was still no movement from his friend. “George!” A pause. “George? Cummon George, stop messing about.” He shook him harder, and then grabbed a blanket and pulled it off the bed. “George!!” But there was still no response.  
Ringo was familiar with the concept of serious illness. Whereas other people dismissed it as the kind of thing that only happened to other people, Ringo knew that it could and did happen to anyone. Swallowing a panic that John, had he been there, would have derided, Ringo dropped to his knees by the bed. In films they always feel for a pulse but he had no idea how to do that, so instead he listened for breathing. And yes, it was there, very steady in fact, and reassuringly deep, with no gurgle or scary death rattle. George Harrison was still alive. “George!! This is stupid! Stop messing about. Do you want to go out or not?” When he still received no answer, he grabbed his friend’s arm and shoulder and hauled him towards him so that he was lying on his back. “George!”  
The manhandling did at last elicit some kind of response. “Fkff!” Whatever that meant, and Ringo could take a guess, it sounded pretty angry. The arm Ringo had grabbed was wrenched away and George rolled back onto his side again. That was all. The eyes remained closed, and in the half-light the lean face seemed very pale. “George!” Ringo shook him again, considerably more roughly than before, and considered slapping his friend’s face, again like they did in films, but reckoned that he was likely to get his teeth knocked out so decided against it. “Are you alright?” This last directly into George’s ear.  
There had to be something wrong.  
He should… what? He should call a doctor. But he didn’t know any, Brian took care of all that stuff. So he should call Brian. And his heart froze at the thought of the fuss Brian would make. He’d rush over, he’d be angry. All for a tired Beatle. If that’s all that was wrong.  
Ringo didn’t know what to do. And George slept on.  
He thought about calling Paul, who could be quite sensible and level headed, none of which Ringo felt right now. But he never knew where Paul was. He’d taken up with that actress Jane and now he was all over the place and never bothered to come back to the flat.  
Not that Ringo blamed him for that. It was a dump.  
The idea of phoning John may have fleetingly travelled through his brain but it swept right along and straight out again very soon. John’d be good at doing a lot of jokes and being a spastic and lurching around, but Ringo just couldn’t see him actually being of any practical use. Of course, the person he’d most like to be able to call was George himself. However…  
Ringo crouched more comfortably by the bed and scrutinised his comatose friend carefully. He was breathing. He had spoken. Sort of. He did just seem asleep, but he didn’t want to wake up. He wasn’t freezing cold or burning hot. He was just… normal.  
Only asleep.  
The thing that bothered him a bit was that George had in fact seemed out of sorts last night. Tired, tetchy, miserable. Maybe he was just going down with something, as his mum had always put it. A cold or something.  
Ringo made a decision. He climbed back to his feet, pulled the covers back over George (he wouldn’t let himself admit that he was actually tucking him in) and left the room, closing the door behind him. He finished getting ready, he grabbed a door key and some cash, he took one last look in on George, who was just the same, and he left the messy and cheerless flat and headed off into town and some fun.

 

George’s eyelids fluttered open. It was dark; yet he could tell that this was because he was buried under the bedclothes. He blinked, sighed deeply, closed his eyes and then opened them again. And lay, relaxed, and he was aware that he felt well, rested, good. Better than he had for ages.  
Another deep deep breath, and then he reached up with one arm and pulled the covers down away from his head.  
Daylight was shining through the closed curtains, so it might be time to think about getting up. Possibly. Maybe. There was a watch on the bedside table.  
George gazed placidly at the watch for some while before reaching out slowly and carefully to grasp the strap and bring it close to his face.  
3.20. Okay. He was going to eat out with Ringo this evening, so plenty of time.  
Plenty of time before he had to go out, but he then realised that a visit to the bathroom was necessary, and was in fact becoming increasingly necessary with every passing second. He pushed himself upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed, and climbed unsteadily to his feet. His upright posture brought desperation in its wake, and he strode across the room to the door, wrenched it open and fairly dashed down the hall to the bathroom, reaching his goal just in time, with eye-watering relief.  
God knows what he’d drunk last night, but there must have been a lot of it. Its disposal took quite some time.  
He turned back towards the door and strolled through, to be met by Ringo in the hall. “George!”  
“Yeah?”  
“George!!”  
George paused on his way to the kitchen and turned to look at his friend. “You ok, Rich?”  
“Me??”  
George halted, and looked at Ringo, his face wrinkling in puzzlement. “Yeah, you. Are you alright? You’re…”  
“George! You’re alright! Are you alright? You’re alright!!”  
George stared at him. “Fer fuck’s sake Rich, what ya going on about?”  
“You’re alright.”  
“Of course I am! What…?”  
“You’re not dying!”  
“What???” George almost shrieked.  
The two young men faced each other in the dingy hall, one inarticulate and the other baffled and somewhat alarmed. “Why the fuck d’you think I’m dying?” George was shouting, his post slumber serenity fast evaporating.  
“Well I don’t now.”  
“But…”  
“You were asleep.”  
George’s mouth dropped open. There was nothing he could think of to say. He shook his head.  
“You were asleep for two days!”  
Now his eyes widened and jaw gaped even further. “Crap!”  
“It isn’t crap. You did!”  
“It’s crap. It is. We came back last night from the Ad Lib and you fell over…”  
“That wasn’t last night. It was the night before last!”  
“No! We’re going to eat with…”  
“That was last night! I went on my own. I couldn’t wake you up. You wouldn’t wake up. I thought…”  
George’s face scrunched up even more, in astonishment, as he started to take in what his friend was telling him. And realised that he believed it. It wasn’t crap. He’d actually missed a whole day.  
“But I’m fine,” was all he could think of to say.  
“Well, you are now. Now you’ve slept.”  
George ran his hand fiercely through his hair as he walked into the kitchen and without thought started to fill the kettle for a cup of tea.  
“And you were pretty shit that night.”  
“What d’ya mean?” George looked for clean cups and found none, so swilled out a dirty one. His head was spinning.  
“You were all grouchy and miserable. I thought you were going to burst into tears.”  
George turned and looked at him, and tried to think back. And found he knew exactly what Ringo was talking about. He had been tired. And miserable, and, in fact, he remembered thinking that he was absolutely at the end of his tether. He remembered thinking that he just couldn’t carry on another day, with all the work and the pressure and the fans…  
So, it would seem, he just went to sleep.  
For two days!!!  
He smiled, a little tentatively. “I’m alright now though. I think.” He looked at the cup, and then back at Ringo. “Want one?”  
“Yeah. Ta.”  
George spooned sugar into both cups. And then paused again, and turned to face Ringo. “Hang on!”  
Ringo frowned. “What?”  
George dropped the spoon back into the cup and found his hands on his hips. “”If you thought I was dying why the fuck were you just hanging around the flat waiting for me to come round? Why didn’t you…?”  
“I wasn’t! I wasn’t just hanging around. I’d only just woken up! You woke me up, going for a slash.”  
George thought about that one, and then nodded. “Yeah. Fair enough.” He poured boiling water into the cups. “No wonder that took so long as well.” He chuckled. “Two days!!”  
Ringo took one of the proffered cups and sat down at the tiny kitchen table. “Do you think you should see a doctor though? I mean… two days… it’s not normal.”  
George sat opposite him at the table, and took a sip of his hot tea. “Nah,” he said. “I think I was just tired. I think I’d had enough of it all.” He held his teacup in both hands, and stared thoughtfully out of the small grubby window.  
“So…”  
George looked back at him. “I think I’ll go home,” he said. He nodded to himself, as though satisfied with his idea. “I’m gonna go home.” And he smiled at his friend.


	2. LIVERPOOL

George stepped inside the bedroom and tossed his overnight bag onto the bed. He glanced briefly around the room, and then crossed to peer out of the window onto the street below. This cursory examination completed, he stretched himself out along the single bed, kicking the overnight bag back onto the floor. He lay along the neatly made bed and stared up at the ceiling.  
He had come back home; and yet, it was not the same as if he’d come back home to Upton Green. Upton Green may as well have been his home for all his life. He had only one or two distinct memories of Arnold Grove, since he’d only been about six when they’d finally been moved out of that tiny space into the spacious luxury of Upton Green. Spacious, though he’d still had to share with his brother so not that spacious. Upton Green was his real childhood home. His mum and dad had only moved here to this one about a year ago, and it wasn’t his home, it was theirs. He was very glad for them, as his mum had never liked the Speke area, but it was still theirs and not his.  
So, really, he didn’t have a home any more. That’s how it felt. He was always welcome back, he knew that. More than welcome, his mum yearned for him to visit more than he did. But it was still her house, their house; not his. And the London flat was as far from a home as it was possible to be. It was a roof, that was all. A roof and a bedroom.  
George lay, still and quiet. He listened. Clatter from downstairs, no doubt his mum was making tea. A couple of cars swishing past outside. His ears rang with the silence.  
There was a tap on the door.  
“C’min?” he called, still flat out on his back, still staring at the ceiling. He knew what it would be.  
Louise Harrison opened the door and bustled inside, two mugs of tea balanced in one hand. “Tea,” she announced, unnecessarily, and set them both down on the bedside table. She’d brought two, so obviously intended to stay and chat. He was fine with that. He pushed himself more upright so that he could lean against the headboard, long legs still stretched out in front of him, and reached for the cup nearest him.  
“Mine?”  
“Yes. Geo, get your shoes off the bed.”  
He sighed, and wrinkled his nose at her in protest.  
“They might do that sort of thing in London, but not in our house. Off!”  
George sighed again, but in good humour, and with exaggerated effort leaned forward and pushed both his shoes off and let them drop noisily to the floor. He leaned back again and picked up his tea. “Thanks.” He took a sip; and then he looked up as he became aware that his mother was staring at him. He frowned slightly, head to one side. “What? Something wrong?”  
Louise shook her head and smiled, and then looked down at her own cup of tea and back up at him. “It’s just…” She paused, and shrugged. “It’s nice to see you.” She paused again, as though considering her words, and then went on. “I don’t see you very often. Not just you. Not on stage.” She sat down on the chair on the other side of the room.  
“I can’t…”  
“George, I know it’s not your fault. I’m not…”  
“I know yer not.” And he did. And she did. There was no discomfort in the room with them. He sipped at his tea, and she did the same. “Pete’s going to try and come over,” she said. “And Harry. See you before you go off.”  
George peered at her over the rim of the mug. “I am coming back, you know.”  
She laughed. “I know! Don’t be daft. It’s just… it all seems to be taking off so much now. You’re so busy.” She paused for more tea, and then laughed again. “Who’d have thought it, eh?”  
“Thought what?”  
“You. All of you, the Beatles. In the papers every day.” George said something that sounded like “hmph”, and Louise saw his lips tighten. “It’s exciting!” She looked across at her son. “Isn’t it. I can’t go down to the shops without people stopping me everywhere and talking about you all.”  
“Do you mind that?”  
“Course I don’t! It’s great.” Louise put her cup down on the floor next to her, and leaned back and crossed her legs. “George, are you alright?”  
George looked up in surprise. “Yeah. I’m fine.”  
“Once more with feeling?”  
He laughed. “I am. I’m just…” He stopped, and an easy silence fell which neither tried to break. Maybe this was why he’d dumped a bag in his car and fled up here, to Liverpool – to his mum. To the opportunity to leave silences in the conversation, and for someone to ask him how he was and mean it. “I’m just tired.”  
“I’m not surprised.” She paused. “Are you looking after yourself?”  
George grinned at her. “No!” and she laughed. “It’s…” but again he didn’t know how to continue. It was all so huge, so crazy; and so unexpected.  
“It’s what you’ve all been working for for years.”  
“Oh yeah, I know. It’s…” He stared down into his tea, and Louise didn’t try to hurry him. She filled the silence by just enjoying seeing him again. In the flesh, not staring out of a grainy newspaper picture or on a telly interview. The fact was, she reflected, she was enjoying every minute of her youngest’s extraordinary success. Louise loved the fans, the trips to the Beatles shows, the reports of greater and greater success, all tumbling out faster than anyone could keep up with. At this moment, however, maybe it was time to slow down and see it from his point of view.  
“You’re not ill?” she asked eventually, and he shook his head.  
“Really, I’m just tired. I’m a bit worried about going to America, with the flight an’all, I’m really knackered. But no…” He paused again, and finally found some words. “It’s so…crazy. It’s daft.” He looked up at her again, and held her eyes. “Everyone’s gone mad, except us.”  
“I haven’t gone mad, Geo.” She returned his gaze. “We’re still here.”  
He nodded. “That’s good,” he said. And meant it.


	3. ASTONISHMENT

“Why do they scream then?”  
George looked at his eldest brother over the rim of another cup of tea. He shrugged.  
“No, I mean – why?”  
“I dunno.”  
“You must.”  
“I don’t! How should I know?”  
“Well you’re in the middle of it.”  
“Exactly. I’m not doing it am I.”  
“But…”  
“I’ve never asked them have I. Excuse me, why are you screaming.” He paused for another sip of his tea. “Anyway, they wouldn’t hear me. They’d be screaming too loud.”  
Louise laughed, and George smiled across the room at her, and then leaned back against the back of the sofa, setting one ankle across the other knee. In truth, he felt a little irritated by his brother’s questioning. It was bad enough having to hear all that noise every minute of every day; he hadn’t come up here to end up talking about it.  
But it was true what he’d said. He didn’t have any idea why they did it. There had been a bit of it when they were still in Liverpool, once they’d got well known here, but nothing like now, when they just start it up the second they get a glimpse of one of them and carry on non stop until they’d gone again. He really didn’t know.  
He really didn’t know why any of it was happening.  
He knew they were good. He’d known that since Hamburg. They all had. Audience reaction had been useful then, because it told them that they were streets ahead of their competition. Ever since Litherland Town Hall they’d known that they could hold any audience, control any room. That was why it was so frustrating when they couldn’t get a recording contract, because they knew how much better they were than so many of those other acts who were plodding up and down the charts. So yeah, The Beatles were good. But – he hadn’t been ready for this and neither had the others and none of them understood it, not really.  
He’d looked out of their hotel window one day, somewhere, he had no clue where or when and it didn’t matter, they were all the same, same kind of hotels, same kind of theatres. He’d looked out (carefully, to make sure he didn’t set off another barrage of screams) and saw a girl, sitting on the curb across the road, her feet in the road. And she had on a teeshirt that had his picture on it and it said I love George, except that it was a heart instead of love. I heart George. And she was crying. And he knew enough about it all now to know that she wasn’t crying because she was sad, she was crying because she was near – him.  
How?  
All those years. Paul’s sneers, thinly disguised as encouragement. “You bringing a bird tonight Georgie?” when he knew George wasn’t going out with anyone. John’s blatant scorn, not disguised as anything, about how young he was. The hit and miss attempts to make it with girls. It got better once the group got popular around the city, and for a lot of girls that was enough to prompt them to turn to him with winning and encouraging smiles and a lot more besides. But now – now a girl he’d never met had a teeshirt with his picture on it and was crying because she knew he was in the hotel across the road.  
And he was exactly the same person as the one who’d just come back from Hamburg. Nothing had changed except his haircut, and now the suits. He looked the same; more or less. A bit older, because he was. And he didn’t look too bad. Some spots still… Yet girls had his face on their teeshirts and cried and screamed. For him. Not just for the others and not just for all of them, they screamed for him. Their last gig before his time off, he’d been reading some of his fan letters in the dressing room while he ate his sandwich, and what they said in some of them was enough to make your hair curl, as his mother would say.  
Though he’d make damn sure his mother never read any of those letters.  
He was the same as before. So was Paul, so was John. And Rich. And they’d played Litherland Town Hall, and they’d played the London Palladium and they’d played the Royal Command Performance when that old German bird slinked up to him which was funny, and now he felt as if he was on the Most Wanted list because the only way he could go anywhere was in secret and if he was careless he got attacked. By little girls in teeshirts with his picture on.  
“Hey!” he said suddenly, as though he’d only just remembered, which wasn’t the case because it was on his mind all the time. “I’ve bought a Jag!”  
“You what?”  
“I’ve bought a Jag! An E Type! Black!” George was grinning from ear to ear, as he couldn’t help doing every time he thought about his new car. “I’ll collect it when we get back from America.”  
“Flippin ‘eck,”said Harry.  
“George! You will be careful in it won’t you.”  
“Did you get a good deal? Have you had someone check it over?”  
“It’s brand new, dad! It’s from the showroom! It’ll be fine.”  
“How long will that take you to pay off?” Harry sounded genuinely astonished. George looked at him consideringly. Apparently, he and the others weren’t the only ones taken by surprise at Beatle success. He found himself schooling his voice carefully.  
“It’s… paid for. I don’t have to pay it off,” he said, addressing this reply to the three of them. Suddenly, this conversation wasn’t just about a car any more. Now it was also about where he’d got to since the days when he lived at home all the time. About the reality of Beatle success.  
About the fact that baby George now had more money than the rest of his family put together, and George needed that to be alright with them. He needed to know that he wasn’t just the same in his own head and his own mind, but in their minds too. He looked around at the three astounded faces, his wide and triumphant grin now faded to a tentative and slightly anxious smile.  
“Jammy bugger,” said Harry, but he too was smiling across at his little brother.  
“Well!” exclaimed his mother, and the excitement in her eyes was clear to see, even for a slightly worried son.  
His dad seldom said much, but what George recognised in the stoic and down-to-earth face was - pride.  
George’s grin returned, two-fold. “It’s a 3.8! It…” Recalling his mother’s initial reaction, he thought better of telling them that it did nought to sixty in under seven seconds. “It’s got a record player in it!”  
He reached for his cup of tea, and, unseen by his family members around him, sighed quietly in relief.


	4. ANGER

“There’s girls across the road,” said his dad; he was coming back into the room from a trip to the bathroom, and he settled himself back into his chair and returned to his newspaper.  
“Lots?” asked Louise.  
Harry Senior shrugged. “Not that many. They don’t seem to know he’s here.”  
George listened to this brief exchange and realised that it had made him feel acutely uncomfortable. The rest of his family, dad in his usual armchair, mum bustling around making sure everyone was topped up with tea and Harry trying to read the back page of the paper while his dad held it, seemed completely at ease, just like they always had, all his life. So why…?  
Perhaps it had been the bit about ‘they don’t seem to know he’s here’.  
They were being so bloody calm about it. So matter of fact. “They don’t know he’s here”.  
He. Not “you”. He.  
The Beatle.  
They were being more calm and matter of fact about it than he was, for God’s sake. Couldn’t they get a bit excited? Couldn’t they get all surprised about it? Oh my goodness, there’s a crowd of girls trying to meet our George.  
They don’t know he’s here.  
They didn’t even look up at him when they said it. They were talking about him as if he wasn’t in the room. “He” had obviously become something they had to deal with. Something… to be coped with.  
Why the hell was this bugging him?  
The doorbell rang.  
Harry instantly rose to his feet and approached the window from the side. He peered out carefully from behind the net curtain. He looked like a spy in a film.  
“It’s our Pete.” He left the room and went to the front door and opened it. Just wide enough to let Peter in. George stood up as his brother came in, and grinned at the brother who’d been closest to him all his life, the next one up.  
“Pete.”  
“Geo.” Peter moved across the room, and punched George on the arm. The punch, and the childhood nickname, were the closest he could get to “I’m glad to see you,” and the most George would have expected. He nodded, smiling.  
“Harry, could you get a fresh cup for Pete?”  
“I can go.” George was still on his feet, but his mother waved him back down. “It’s alright, Harry can go. You stay where you are.”  
Wrong again. It had always been him, the baby, who’d been expected to carry out household errands. Not the oldest brother. Now, he was told to sit back down and be waited on. Wrong. Wrong.  
Something had happened. What had happened?  
When he’d decided, on impulse, to leave London and come back up to Liverpool, it was familiarity he was expecting. Needing. Not this.  
Harry came back with the extra cup for Pete and Louise refreshed the pot of tea. And George stared at them all and found, oh God, this wasn’t right, he found he was getting angry. And he was tired of getting angry.  
It didn’t seem to take much, these days.

  
_It was in Plymouth, in November, and they had to leave the theatre and go and do a radio thing, but the crowds were too big and they had to wait for a good moment to make the break for it. “Now! Go!” Neil shouted and they dashed to the door and out. John was at the front, then Paul just in front of him. George followed on closely; he became aware of unevenness in the pavement below his feet and he paused and looked down. He felt a large hand in the centre of his back, not a fan, it was a policeman, and George heard him shout ‘Get on there, hurry up’, and the policeman prodded him and then gave a push._  
_For a moment his mind went blank. Anyone watching him, and hundreds were, though not that closely, would have seen that his eyes had done exactly the same. The crowd and the jostling and the screams and the noise had faded, as he whirled around to face the man who had pushed at him as though he was a commodity, a lad, a kid in Lower School being taunted by a fifth former with his prefect’s badge. George took a step towards the policeman. He didn’t know that both his fists were clenched._  
_Another hand touched him, but this time gently, carefully, on the shoulder. George spun around again, to be met by Paul, hand on his upper arm, eyes seeking his, face concerned, expression urgent. “George. Hey. It’s fine.”_  
_George took lots of deep breaths, as he struggled to come back to the reality of the situation. A crowd, threatening damage, to him and to his friends. A policeman, probably never been in this situation before, doing his best, getting over-enthusiastic._  
_Beatles. Crowded, exhausted, sometimes frightened, bewildered. What the fuck was happening? What did this have to do with rock and roll?_  
_“George?”_  
_George nodded, and stepped forward again, alongside Paul, towards the safety of the car door. He didn’t turn around to the policeman again. He didn’t matter._  
_It had all taken just a few seconds._

  
“George?”  
“Hmmm?” He hadn’t heard a word.  
“How long you up here?” Pete had plonked himself down on the sofa next to his little brother, and reached out to take his newly delivered cup of tea. George blinked at him, as he returned to the present moment.  
“A couple of days,” he replied. “We’re going to America next week.”  
“I know! You meeting up with Lou?”  
“Yeah. She’s coming to New York to the hotel. Brian’s fixing it all up.” He hoped. He assumed. Brian fixed everything up. “I’ll see her there.”  
“It won’t be like when we went over!” Peter laughed. “No-one knew you then.”  
“No-one knows us now. Not there.”  
“You’ve had a number one.”  
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean they’ll recognise us or anything. It’ll probably be the same. We’ll probably be able to get out, see the sights.” George paused, and turned his head look at his brother. “It was good then, wasn’t it.”  
He heard the unexpected wistful tone in his voice. So did the others.  
“It’s good now, luv.” Louise looked at him carefully, the way she did. “Isn’t it. It’s just different.”  
“Certainly different,” Harry joined in. He’d stopped trying to read the back page of his dad’s newspaper, and was leaning back in his chair, a slice of cake balanced precariously in one hand.  
“Harry! Use a plate,” Louise tutted. He reached for a cake plate and leaned back again.  
“Don’t think I’ve had that many girls looking through the living room window, even when I was in me prime.”  
“What??”  
“You knew that.”  
“No I didn’t. They look through your windows?”  
“Yeah. And Pete’s.” Peter nodded. “Thought you knew.”  
“No.” He felt his jaw clenching. “I didn’t.”  
The funny thing was, none of them seemed to mind. They seemed to just take it as something that happened. Like “they don’t know he’s here.” Things were happening to them, just because of him, and they didn’t seem to mind. They were fine with it. They were fine together, as a family; but not including him. A whole way of thinking had built up here, without him even knowing. And it was a good thing they didn’t mind. It was a good thing they were fine with it. He’d hate it if they weren’t.  
But things had changed. And that, that wasn’t a good thing. George did not like that. At all.


	5. JOY

“Yeah, but…”  
“But what?” George peered enquiringly at his brother, before grabbing another biscuit off the plate. He leaned back again, and reached for his tea with his free hand. Jammie Dodgers. His mum always got them in when he came home. His favourite. “What?”  
Pete shrugged. “Well,” he went on, and frowned. “You’re not...” He shrugged again, and then seemed to find the words he was looking for. “You’re away from all your people, aren’t you. Down in London. You don’t know anyone.”  
“I know the others.” No-one had to ask who he meant by ‘the others’. Pete shook his head.  
“Yeah, but that’s all. You don’t know anyone else. You go out here and there’s loads of people you know, right there, everywhere you go. You haven’t got that down in London. You’re on your own.”  
George looked at him reflectively across the small, smoky cosy room. He nibbled at the jam bit in the middle of his biscuit as he watched the thoughts go through his head and wondered how many of them he could relay to his well-meaning family. How every minute of his life was filled to the brim with the kind of living he’d never known before, never imagined. Yes, up here he knew lots of people. He’d meet them at the bus stop, they’d shiver together in the rain waiting for the next bus. He’d never been on a bus in London. You went outside and flagged down a taxi and you went to a club. At first that seemed wrong, a waste of money, but in the end he realised that was how he could live, how he was expected to live, and so he did.  
Did he try to explain to his brother what it was like when you walked into the Ad Lib to be immediately engulfed in darkness and music, and women? Girls. Everywhere. Would his brother understand that down there, in London, there was no tentative chatting up, no wondering if she liked him. She did; they all did. He could stroll into the Ad Lib, sit at the table reserved for them, The Beatles, accept the rum and coke brought by the cute waitress without his having to ask, and survey the possibilities which danced, smiled and flirted around him and simply take his pick. He was usually there with Ringo, and they refined the unspoken signals between the two of them – “Got one, I’m off back to the flat.” It was better if he could go to her flat, but that was rare; she often lived with her mum, or three other girls. Mind you, there was that time when the, in this case, two other girls were very happy to entertain him alongside his new friend. George lay, submerged in sheets and breasts and soft flesh, and thought not at all about his old mates left behind in Liverpool.  
The girls liked him. He could tell that they did. He found he could catch an eye and then smile a certain smile, and he had them. This wasn’t a skill he’d had any opportunity to practise in Liverpool, where there were standards of behaviour that nice girls were expected to maintain. Or in Hamburg, where there were no standards of behaviour at all and he was usually too drunk or buzzing to know or care who he was with. The difference here was, they were the kings.  
They simply were the kings. Their own tables in the clubs, the sales assistants fawning over them in the posh shops around Knightsbridge and Mayfair, the swoop of the waiters when they entered the best restaurants and were guided to the best tables. The four boys would step out onto the streets in the late mornings and know that they owned them. They owned the streets; they owned the city. And it didn’t matter if they weren’t surrounded by a gaggle of old mates, because they didn’t need them. They had each other, those four completely different people, completely different personalities. There was John, still and always angry and pretending as hard as he could not to be married but now and then allowing himself to share the high glee at the incomprehensible success which had finally come their way. There was Paul, always with an eye to the future, the best way up the social ladder, the best people to mix with, the right expression when they met the press; and the posh girlfriend with the flaming red hair. There was Ringo, his companion, his drinking buddy, his only flat mate once Paul moved out and John found a new place and the one who of all of them was openly and guilelessly overjoyed to experience everything that came their way.  
And him. The baby, growing up fast, and aware that the extraordinary life style which was now being thrust upon them was building a wall, driving a wedge, whatever you wanted to say, between himself and his family because they couldn’t hope to understand what it was like. No-one could, except maybe Brian but not even him really because he wasn’t right in the middle of it. Only the four of them understood it and its uniqueness pushed them closer and closer together until they almost had their own language, their own set of expressions and the rest of the world was shut out. It was crazy and, even though it was sometimes scary and sometimes exhausting and sometimes really annoying, it was also out of this world.  
“No”, George smiled at Pete and shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m good. We’re always rushed off our feet and…” He paused, trying to find words that didn’t sound too much like a slushy film. “The others are always there. They’re…” Here he was again, back at the unexplainable. “They’re good mates,” he finished, lamely, but using the only words he thought that his brother might understand.  
“And you’re off to America next week!” Louise interjected briskly, knowing without knowing how she knew that she needed to divert a potentially tricky conversation. George nodded.  
“Do you think you’ll go down well there?” His dad sounded a note of concern, and George shrugged.  
“It’ll either be the beginning or the end,” he said. “It’s something called the Ed Sullivan Show. I hope they like us.”  
He reached for another cup of tea, and smiled at his mum.  
“Course they will!” she declared, and beamed broadly back at him “You’re the best.”


End file.
